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Honeycomb organizes your telemetry data into a hierarchy: teams contain environments, environments contain datasets, and datasets contain event or metrics data, depending on dataset type. Understanding this structure helps you instrument your systems effectively, manage access, and get the most out of Honeycomb’s query capabilities.

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Events

An event is a structured record of a single unit of work. It captures what happened, when it happened, how long it took, and any contextual information you choose to include, such as user IDs, feature flags, error messages, build IDs, and environment names. Events are JSON objects sent over HTTP. Every field in an event is labeled and indexed automatically, which means Honeycomb can filter, group, and aggregate on any field without knowing about it in advance. You don’t need to define your schema ahead of time or decide which fields to index before you know what questions you want to ask. Fields appear in the Query Builder as soon as they arrive. Traces and logs arrive in Honeycomb as structured events. Metrics arrive as time-series data points in dedicated metrics datasets. To learn how each signal maps to the event model, visit Traces, Metrics, and Logs.

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Datasets

A dataset is a collection of related from a single service or data source. Trace and log datasets contain events; metrics datasets contain time-series data points. Honeycomb can create a dataset automatically when you first send data if your API key is allowed to do so. With OpenTelemetry and Environments, your service name is often the dataset name for new datasets. All events in a dataset share the same schema, which is the set of fields Honeycomb has seen across all events sent to that dataset. Some dataset conventions:
  • Trace datasets contain spans with trace.trace_id, trace.span_id, and duration_ms fields.
  • Log datasets contain events with a body field or a field mapped to Logs: Message.
  • Metrics datasets contain time-series data points built on the OpenTelemetry Metrics Data Model.
To learn how to configure and manage datasets, visit Manage Datasets.

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Environments

An environment groups datasets that you expect to analyze together. Environments typically separate data by deployment stage (Production, Staging, Development) or by regulatory boundary. Honeycomb queries run within a single environment by design. That boundary keeps production data separate from staging data and prevents accidental cross-environment analysis. Honeycomb has three API key types:
  • Ingest Keys send telemetry data to a specific environment.
  • Configuration Keys manage resources within an environment, such as Boards, Triggers, and SLOs.
  • Management Keys operate at the team level and manage API keys and environments across your whole team.
The key you use to send data determines which environment receives it. To learn how to configure and manage environments, visit Manage Environments.

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Teams

A team is the top-level organizational unit in Honeycomb. It represents your organization and contains all of your environments, datasets, and members. When you sign up for Honeycomb, you create a team, typically named after your company or organization. Team members have roles that control what each person can do. To learn about available roles, visit Manage team permissions.